F.B.I. Agent Ousted Over Her Handling Of a Chinese Spying Inquiry

NY Times ^ | 1/30/02 | DAVID JOHNSTON

[truthandlife]

The director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, has removed a senior counterintelligence official from her job over her handling of an investigation into suspicions of Chinese espionage, bureau officials say.

The espionage investigation centers on suspicions that China tried to recruit a spy against the United States. Officials provided few additional details, and as a result the identity of the subject of the investigation is unknown. They also would not say whether any spying had actually taken place and what, if any, information may have been compromised.

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said Mr. Mueller had lost patience with Sheila Horan, one of the bureau's highest ranking women, for failing, in his view, to conduct a sufficiently aggressive inquiry into the accusations. Mr. Mueller was said to be especially displeased that she did not provide him sooner with details about the case.

In what officials said was an unusually swift decision, Mr. Mueller transferred Ms. Horan from her job as acting head of the bureau's national security division to an administrative support position. They said she was expected to leave the bureau. Ms. Horan did not respond to a telephone call to her office.

The agency's national security division, also known as the counterintelligence division, has been reeling since the espionage inquiry last year that unmasked a senior agent, Robert P. Hanssen, as a Russian spy, and has been trying to regroup at a time when the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operation has been vastly overshadowed by the bureau's efforts to cope with terrorism.

Any suggestion of Chinese involvement in espionage has been particularly delicate to the Justice Department since the collapse of the case against Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear weapons scientist who was initially suspected of spying for China. Dr. Lee, who pleaded guilty in September 2000 to one count of mishandling classified material, has charged that he was singled out for hostile scrutiny because he is Chinese-American.

Mr. Mueller, who was on the job less than two weeks when the Sept. 11 terror attacks occurred, has been preparing to announce a broader personnel shakeup and reorganization of the F.B.I.'s top managerial ranks. His actions in Ms. Horan's case are widely viewed in the bureau as reflecting his increasing confidence as head of the law enforcement agency.

Mr. Mueller has been demanding more accountability from top officials at the F.B.I. and has been under pressure from Attorney General John Ashcroft to strengthen the bureau's management.

The espionage inquiry is said to be unrelated to Beijing's discovery last month of sophisticated satellite-activated bugging devices installed aboard a Boeing 767 jetliner that was delivered to China in September as President Jiang Zemin's official aircraft.

President Bush is scheduled to visit Beijing in a few weeks. Thus far, the bugging case has brought no official protest and appears to have had little impact on the United States- China relationship.

Friends of Ms. Horan said that Mr. Mueller had unfairly blamed her for longstanding problems in the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operations. In particular, they said, she was singled out for weaknesses that Mr. Mueller had concluded had hampered the bureau's efforts to thwart Chinese espionage.

Other officials said that Mr. Mueller had been planning to overhaul the counterespionage operations and had been impatient with the breezy and independent style of Ms. Horan, an agent with more than two decades of experience at the F.B.I.

In recent months, Ms. Horan's standing had eroded. She had been a deputy to Neil Gallagher, who before his retirement had headed the national security division and took much of the criticism from Congress concerning the Lee case. Under Mr. Gallagher, Ms. Horan had been in day-to-day charge of spy investigations.

Earlier, Ms. Horan had worked at the F.B.I.'s Washington office heading counterterrorism investigations. She was placed in charge of the initial investigation into the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, an inquiry that led to the conviction of several Al Qaeda followers of Osama bin Laden.

The shakeup over the Chinese case comes as Justice Department internal inquiries into the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operation are nearing completion and are expected to conclude that the national security division needs to be strengthened and brought under tighter managerial control.

A broad review of the F.B.I.'s counterespionage division has been under way for nearly a year led by William H. Webster, the former director of the F.B.I. and the Central Intelligence Agency. Another review by the Justice Department's inspector general is nearing completion.

[archy]

Unknown. But note that in news accounts relating to the Hanssen arrest, former FBI deputy chief of counter- terrorism in the mid-1980s [a Reagan/Bush I -era posting] Robert Heibel was the PBS analyst in the reporting on the case, and that he is now director of the intelligence analyst program at Mercyhurst College.

I wonder that he might soon be finding new work with the FBI again, either as the new CI chief, or as a well-paid consultant to whoever does get the job....

-archy-/-

[thinden]

She'll probably resign and run for governor of some state like, say, Oklahoma."

har. the okie's will NEVER vote for her. Oklahoma votes for one of the most conservative slates of candidates in the country. I think the entire Oklahoma congressional delegation is still repub. repub guv, too.

her best shot at elective office would be to follow the footsteps of hildabeast...NY congress person....maybe taxachusetts? DC rep?

[stimulate]

What??

[Fred Mertz]

FWIW, my gut feeling is that she was a white hat and needed to go for reasons still to be determined.

[at bay]

I don't know if it's a good firing or a bad one, the point now is that heads are rolling, and heads needed to be rolling a long time ago. How about the nincompoops that denied a search warrant for the 20th hijacker whom Minnesota agents had taken into custody? How about publicly hanging those ***holes out to dry?

How about announcing a new merit system for local agents and increased independence for them to do their job? In fact, how about firing dozens if not hundreds of leftover lackey stooges and re-energizing the Bureau with fresh talent from all walks of life?

How about acknowledging the gross violations of civil rights the Bureau engaged in in the past and renaming the FBI building from the current "J. Edgar Hoover" building.

To quote J. Edgar (in a missive to MLK threatening to expose Martin Luther King and hoping he would commit suicide): "You know what to do."

[gnarledmaw]

F.B.I. Is Investigating a Senior Counterterrorism Agent

[aristeides]

If Horan was in Nairobi on the embassy bombing investigation in 8/98, Louis Freeh was also in East Africa at the same time.

If Horan's expertise was in counterintelligence against China, I wonder why she was put in charge of the embassy-bombing investigation. Or was she only assigned to the China problem after the '98 investigation?

[aristeides]

FWIW, my gut feeling is that she was a white hat and needed to go for reasons still to be determined.

Could be she was developing her cases in too energetically anti-China a fashion to suit the administration. Did you notice Bush's favorable words about China's role in the war against terrorism in his speech last night?

[VaBthang4]

Mr. Mueller, who was on the job less than two weeks when the Sept. 11 terror attacks occurred, has been preparing to announce a broader personnel shakeup and reorganization of the F.B.I.'s top managerial ranks. His actions in Ms. Horan's case are widely viewed in the bureau as reflecting his increasing confidence as head of the law enforcement agency.

Outstanding

[archy]

To quote J. Edgar (in a missive to MLK threatening to expose Martin Luther King and hoping he would commit suicide): "You know what to do."

Close paraphrase, but neither a precise quote nor as direct as the original FBI version:

"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. . . . You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

-archy-/-

[kimosabe31]

Is it just my imagination or does Ms Horan look like a twin of Janet "Rhino"?? This babe was in charge of investigating chicom espionage??? Heaven help us.

Leave it to the clintoons to have placed "dikes" and "fags" in all the key national security positions.

[rebdov]

All of our Alphabet agencies urgently need a severe spring cleaning.

[archy]

If Horan was in Nairobi on the embassy bombing investigation in 8/98, Louis Freeh was also in East Africa at the same time.

If Horan's expertise was in counterintelligence against China, I wonder why she was put in charge of the embassy-bombing investigation. Or was she only assigned to the China problem after the '98 investigation?

If she's the same Shelia Moran as in the *Delamere Girls* pic and link in post #51, she may have been chosen for her skill in the Swahili language, learned at a young age. I doubt there are many in the FBI so qualified. And it's also possible she'd be familiar with other languages used in that area as well.

Interestingly, that schooling would place her in Kenya either at the time of the anti-Mau Mau counterterriorism efforts in Kenya, or just very shortly afterward. She'd certainly have been familiar with those activities and have been in personal contact with those at the sharp end of that fight.

[archy]

Is it just my imagination or does Ms Horan look like a twin of Janet "Rhino"?? This babe was in charge of investigating chicom espionage??? Heaven help us.

Leave it to the clintoons to have placed "dikes" and "fags" in all the key national security positions.

Well, I hope it's just your imagination, aided and abetted by the one particularly bad pic of her I've turned up so far. I'd like to think that whether she's a *dike* or *fag* is no more a qualification than disqualification for someone who's grown up under the shadow of the antiterrorist fight and has the language skills and other abilities to get the job done. I don't know that that is the case in her instance, nor that it isn't.

But it seems her trip to Nairobi prior to that press conference was not an uneventful one, and that it might have resulted in something a bit worse than just a *bad hair* day; per following from USNWR:

On terrorism's trail

Author(s): David E. Kaplan; Stefan Lovgren

Issue Date: NOVEMBER 23, 1998

Words in article: 2065

Lead Paragraph:

Special Agent Sheila Horan's flight had just landed in Rota, Spain, for a quick refueling. As Horan strolled into a forward cargo hold to stretch her legs, she saw smoke. "Out!" she yelled to her team of FBI agents and rescue specialists. "Get out of the plane!" No one was hurt, but it took mechanics 12 hours to fix the faulty valve that had routed engine exhaust into the cabin. Horan's government KC-135 arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, at 3 a.m. on August 9....

[vannrox]

"...Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said Mr. Mueller had lost patience with Sheila Horan, one of the bureau's highest ranking women, for failing, in his view, to conduct a sufficiently aggressive inquiry into the accusations. Mr. Mueller was said to be especially displeased that she did not provide him sooner with details about the case..."

This sounds like this person did a number of things that are quite serious:

DELAYED THE INVESTIGATION.
"Soft Gloved" the Investigation.
Poor Documentation, and poor adherence to procedures.

This sounds quite serious.

[CyberAnt]

"preparing to announce a broader personnel shakeup and reorganization of the F.B.I.'s top managerial ranks"

Shaking those Clinton-types out of the mix

"Mr. Mueller has been demanding more accountability from top officials at the F.B.I. and has been under pressure from Attorney General John Ashcroft to strengthen the bureau's management"

I knew something was going on - it was waaaaay too quiet.

"Friends of Ms. Horan said that Mr. Mueller had unfairly blamed her for longstanding problems in the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operations"

Friends huh?? I that anything like being an FOB??

"internal inquiries into the F.B.I.'s counter-intelligence operation are nearing completion, and are expected to conclude that the national security division needs to be strengthened and brought under tighter managerial control

Hopefully, this new shakeup will get rid of the rest of the FOB's in the FBI.

[Illbay]

Clinton aides are looking at contingency plans for covert operations to capture bin Laden from his reputed high-tech lair deep inside Afghanistan...

"...but have been unable to identify any foreign government who would pay millions of dollars in contributions to the Democrat National Committee to make it worth their while to do so, so the planning has been shelved. 'Well, there has to be something in it for us,' White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. 'If we can't find a foreign government--or even a shadowy multi-national business cartel--who wants bin Laden out of the way enough to pay us to do it, it's just not worth it for us. The President is very emphatic about this; there has to be a quid pro quo.'"

[archy]

"Friends of Ms. Horan said that Mr. Mueller had unfairly blamed her for longstanding problems in the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operations"

Friends huh?? I that anything like being an FOB??

Maybe *friends* and lovers, as well....

-archy-/-

[bert]

...She was probably put in charge of the X-files...

She has been installed in a new office where she copies entries from telephone books.

[rightwing2]

It is frustrating that GW Bush can get way with his appeasement of China (without being criticzed or challenged at the risk of being called unpatriotic)by hiding behind our country's need to rally behind the President to fight the very terrorism of which China is the leading backer-Iran, Iraq,AlQaeda, Bin Laden,Hamas,Hezbollah,etc.

Yes, Bush gets away with appeasing Communist China because this policy is paradoxically considered a "conservative" GOP position--namely trading and building up the ChiCom economy will cause Communism to collapse because the ChiCom people will grow rich and lose interest in the Communist system. This is the position taken by fully two-thirds of the Communist appeasing Congressional Republican Caucus! Nothing could be more laughable!! Supporting Communist China with over $100 billion in US trade dollars a year will make the ChiCom leadership elite grow rich and give them the funds to realize their goal of building Communist China into a nuclear and military superpower by 2020. However, enriching the Butchers of Beijing will not cause the demise of Communism in China, but only serve to strenghten it. Furthermore, as you say the Bush Administration is full of champions of the policy of ChiCom appeasement including most notably Elaine Chou, a personal family friend of President Jiang Zemin himself and a Chinagate figure in her own right and Condi Rice who had connections with a ChiCom spy/operative at Stanford. Powell is also a champion of the Clintonian ChiCom appeasement policy. This appeasement policy is very entrenched in the Bush Administration as well as Congress.